


Out In The Open

by entanglednow



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Confessions, First Kiss, Flowers, M/M, Romance, Romantic Gestures, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 01:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21569629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: In which Crowley makes a decision, buys flowers, and then panics.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 115
Kudos: 1008
Collections: Good Omens (Complete works)





	Out In The Open

Crowley has been parked outside the bookshop for exactly four minutes and nineteen seconds.

This is much harder than he'd expected it to be. It's one thing to make the decision, to prepare for it, with determination and a sense of reckless abandon. But it's another thing entirely to actually get up and do it, to go through with it. To take a step that might change everything.

Aziraphale has never liked change.

Crowley turns his head to look down at the passenger seat. There's a large bunch of flowers there, wrapped carefully in lilac and mint paper decorated with curling golden vines.

They're not 'congratulations on your bookshop' flowers. Or 'your new home is lovely' flowers. Or 'I'm sorry for your loss' flowers. Or congratulations for having a baby - or a birthday - or a wedding - or a bloody engagement, flowers. 

No, they're the other sort of flowers. They're 'I'm always thinking about you,' flowers. They're 'there's no one else in this whole universe that means more to me than you,' flowers. They're 'I couldn't exist without you,' flowers. They're 'I want you to look at me like an undiscovered misprinted bible,' flowers. They're, at the very heart of it, 'I love you, you ridiculous angel, and I have to tell you or I will actually go mad,' flowers. 

Which is the reason he's currently hunched in the driver's seat, like some sort of demonic gargoyle, wondering what the fuck he thinks he's doing.

He'd spent an hour picking exactly the right selection of blooms, buds and greenery, for colour, scent and meaning, and then an extra twenty minutes choosing the right paper to wrap them all in, discarding various gaudy bows and ribbons as too much. And Crowley knows that it probably won't matter to Aziraphale, that the angel will more than likely just see a bunch of flowers, unless he cares to investigate further. The wasted time was mostly for Crowley, to punish himself maybe, to force him to really think about the wisdom of all of this. To give him time to decide this is a terrible idea and to drive himself home, throw that carefully chosen bouquet in the bin, or, more likely, angrily burn the evidence of his folly to nothing.

Because there's a good chance that immediately after Crowley's declaration Aziraphale will awkwardly stutter his way through some sort of gentle apology and rejection, after which Crowley will physically turn to ash on the spot. But there's also a slim possibility - a more than zero percent chance - that the angel might accept his bouquet of messy, messy feelings, and that slim possibility is absolutely worth the risk. That slim possibility is literally all he's functioning on right now.

"Get out of the car," he tells himself sharply. Which does very little. Crowley has never much liked doing as he's told. "Stop dithering like a fucking coward and get out of the car." That's a bit better, that's appropriately scathing that is. He finds himself jerkily clawing at the door handle and forcing himself out into the street.

The flowers come with him, looking much bigger when they're actually in his hand, much more obvious. But that's kind of the point, isn't it? Because he's been subtle for more centuries than he can count, for so long that it's become a part of him. Just subtle enough to suggest, to be teasing, to be open, or flirtatious, affectionate at a push. Usually while drunk or if feeling particularly self-destructive. But he's also been subtle enough that it could be ignored, or dismissed, that it could be explained away if necessary, nothing you wouldn't have expected from a natural tempter.

But now, after everything. Subtle feels unbearable.

Crowley makes himself climb the steps and knock on the door, because this seems like a knocking on the door sort of situation, not a strolling inside sort of situation. And he doesn't particularly want to have to leave the shop afterwards if this all goes terribly badly - when this inevitably all goes terribly badly. 

He gives himself a sharp kick in several planes of existence that aren't this one, and forces himself to stand still and wait - when he desperately wants to miracle himself at least a hundred miles in any direction.

Aziraphale opens the door, looking flustered and curious. He frowns when he finds Crowley on the step.

"Crowley, what are you doing? Why didn't you come in?"

He would answer the question, but he's been thinking about what he wants to say for the last four hours, and if he doesn't get at least some of it out then he'll just end up making throat noises, and that's the sort of incoherency he doesn't need right now.

"Here, these are for you," Crowley manages, through an astonishingly dry throat. It's probably unnecessary really, because he's thrusting the flowers forward rather enthusiastically already.

"Oh!" Aziraphale's focus moves from him to the flowers, and he takes them, with a confused sort of delight and a slow-stretching smile, fingers lifting to stroke the petals. "Oh, aren't they lovely. Did I forget something?" He briefly lifts a worried expression back to Crowley. "Tell me I didn't forget something, I'll be dreadfully embarrassed."

Crowley shakes his head.

"No, angel, I'm here to invite you to dinner with me," he says, and apparently his voice has decided to be weirdly formal about it, as if he's lost a hundred and fifty years somewhere. "To have dinner with me, tonight, table for two, candles, wine, the whole deal." He takes the extra moment to let his glasses slide down, narrow pupils fully exposed. Because he wants to make it perfectly clear that this is not a normal invitation. This is not the same as any of the many invitations he's extended before over six thousand years. This is _dinner_ , and a misunderstanding at this point is in-fucking-tolerable.

Aziraphale blinks at him slowly, and then goes very, very still. And though he does have the occasional tendency to miss the obvious to a ridiculous degree, the angel is not stupid, not wilfully stupid.

"Dinner," he says faintly, as if he's somehow forgotten the meaning of the word.

Ok, so the angel gets it, now Crowley needs to provide a safe way for Aziraphale to refuse without changing anything, without - without ruining everything they've been for the last six thousand years. Because he is stupidly, unrecoverably in love with this angel, and that's not going to change. But he can be whatever Aziraphale wants him to be. Whatever he needs him to be. Crowley will do _anything_. He just needs to know before it kills him.

"And I would like to reassure you that I'm perfectly prepared for you to say no, if that's what you want. If you're not interested in - in this, or me. I'll get back in the car and I'll drive home, and I won't mention this again. We can go back to exactly how it was before, go for the other sort of dinner, the companionable sort, very casual, anywhere you like. No pressure, at all, in any way. I just couldn't not ask, because you know how I - if there was even a chance, I couldn't not ask you, could I? The world almost ended, we nearly died, we should have died, and I couldn't -"

He stops because Aziraphale is moving, one of those impossibly strong hands catching Crowley's lapel and dragging him inside the shop, and the door nearly dislocates his shoulder when it shuts right beside him with a snap.

"I can't have this conversation in the doorway," Aziraphale says weakly, flattening the hand that isn't holding a bunch of flowers on Crowley's chest, and he feels the press of every finger down to the bone. "You feel...a little overwhelming right now."

Crowley knows what he means immediately, how obvious he must be, feelings leaking all over the place. Though they can't be that unfamiliar to the angel, not after all this time. It's just - well this time he hasn't made the usual effort to pack it away, crush it down, carefully refuse to acknowledge it when it's written all the way through his bones. That's the thing about honesty, it shows so many of the messy, naked parts underneath, rarely touched and over-sensitive.

"Right, I can - er - try and make that stop," Crowley offers, wondering if he actually can, or if they've all now escaped for good. He can feel his insides filling with something cold and vaguely numb. 

"Don't you dare," Aziraphale says sharply, which throws him for a moment, the vehemence behind it. Crowley feels it all the way down his spine. The bunch of flowers is unceremoniously flung onto the nearest table, throwing pollen and tiny leaves all over a stack of what looks like French poetry.

Crowley's still making confused noises in his throat, meaningless nonsense really, when Aziraphale catches his jacket and pushes him into the back of the door, then steps in close and kisses him. And that's definitely what it is, because Crowley's mouth is crushed under the angel's, glasses knocked crooked, and it's a whole world of warmth, and pressure, and _Aziraphale_.

Oh. 

Oh fuck.

Crowley moves, belatedly, to kiss him back. He pushes narrow fingers through Aziraphale's soft, impossible hair and eases them into a more comfortable position, until they can shift and open against each other. So Crowley can kiss him, the way he's always, _always_ wanted to, since the first moment he saw him. And his whole body is suddenly dizzy with relief and pleasure. 

Aziraphale makes a deep noise of satisfaction, hands tightening in Crowley's jacket. There's a great rushing snap of air, that pushes the angel harder into him, crushing all the air out of Crowley's chest. Books clatter and thud loudly off the shelves behind and above them, in a great pulling drag. Crowley can feel the shadow of Aziraphale's wings through his closed eyes, that echo of thunderstorms and empty space, the way they stretch and then curve in towards him. Crowley tries, completely ineffectively, to stop himself from smiling.

It breaks them apart naturally, and Aziraphale very slowly leans back and opens his eyes. He looks a little drunk, eyes bright, mouth just a touch red, bow tie ever so slightly askew, smiling at Crowley like he's Aziraphale's favourite thing in the world, and Crowley's not sure he knows how to cope with that expression. Aziraphale gives the now quite considerable wingspan behind him a sheepish look and folds them in again, clears his throat.

"I wasn't sure if you'd wait, or if you still felt the same." Aziraphale's voice is quiet, almost apologetic and so very soft. "I was afraid, after everything I said to you -"

Crowley shushes him, hand dropping to find Aziraphale's, so he can tangle their fingers together, like he's wanted to so many times. And it's more than a relief when the angel squeezes gently.

"Of course I did, that was never a question. That's never going to change, angel," Crowley tells him, and he means every word of it. 

Aziraphale frowns and carefully lifts a hand towards Crowley's glasses, asks permission with his eyes. Crowley bows his head forward so the angel can slip them free.

"You've always been too good to me," Aziraphale says quietly, while he folds them carefully and settles them on the table by the door, with the abandoned flowers.

It's a lie, Crowley has been a disaster of epic proportions for six thousand years, for their entire friendship. Unable to resist the urge to seek the angel out for company, for dinner, for drinks. Where they've debated constantly, drank excessively, challenged each other aggressively, and argued frequently (and occasionally spitefully.) He's just been in love with Aziraphale the whole time, and he's cherished every single bloody minute of it.

"I would be delighted to accept your invitation," Aziraphale tells him with a smile, thumb sliding over the curve of Crowley's orbital bone, like he can't stop touching now they've stumbled their way together. "And any further invitations you see fit to extend."

Which is...so impossibly perfect that Crowley doesn't know what to say to it. What are you supposed to say when someone gives you everything you've ever wanted?

He settles for carefully drawing Aziraphale back in again, because this is too new to let go of yet. Aziraphale comes easily, willingly, humming a note of satisfaction and folding himself into Crowley's body, one arm sliding round his waist. Until it can't be classified as anything other than an embrace, and Crowley's left breathing him in, feeling the softness of his hair against his face. And it's too easy to tip his head to the side, to feel the warmth of Aziraphale's skin against his cheek.

This time Crowley kisses him first.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Out In The Open](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23325316) by [Djapchan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Djapchan/pseuds/Djapchan)




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